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    The Charlotte Hornets have named Charles Lee as their next head coach. The 39-year-old Lee joins the Hornets after serving as the Boston Celtics top assistant coach. Lee will complete the Celtics’ playoff run before joining the Hornets on a full-time basis. Lee spent five seasons under Mike Budenholzer before joining the Celtics last summer. Lee replaces Steve Clifford, who announced before the end of the regular season that he was stepping down as Hornets coach after two seasons in his second stint with the club. The Hornets finished 21-61 this season, tied with the Portland Trail Blazers for the league’s third-worst record.

      The Senate is scrambling to pass a $105 billion bill designed to improve air safety and improve customer service for air travelers before the law governing the Federal Aviation Administration expires at midnight on Friday. If senators can’t resolve a series of disputes over the measure by then, around 3,600 FAA employees could be furloughed. The FAA says no one in “safety critical” positions like air traffic controllers would be affected, and the safety of the flying public would not be at risk. But failure to pass the bill by the May 10 deadline would be the latest blow after months of delays.

        A group of Tennesseans who say they were intimidated into not voting in a primary election or were threatened with prosecution after they did vote have filed a challenge to two state laws that require primary voters to be “bona fide” members of the party they vote for. The laws are intended to discourage so-called crossover voting, where members of one party vote in another party’s primary in order to interfere. The lawsuit claims they actually intimidate otherwise legitimate voters from exercising their constitutional rights. Tennessee voters do not register by party, and the laws do not define what it means to be a bona fide party member.

          The nation’s largest public utility pledged to be more transparent after it took months to disclose that a general budget vote by its board last year also gave the CEO the final decision over several proposed natural gas power plants. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s board announced the changes Thursday during its quarterly meeting. The decision followed an August meeting in which the board cast the budget vote that quietly gave President and CEO Jeff Lyash the final say over the projects, including the replacement of the aging coal-fired Kingston Fossil Plant with a natural gas plant. But advocates say those provisions wouldn’t be made known until several months later, when documents with specific details were released.

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